Are you sick and tired of quoted movies during your D&D sessions?

[MoogleEmpMog]

:snip:

why do something that thousands of other people are doing, which reflects nothing of yourself and creates humor (very occasionally) of the bland communal variety?

:and most definitely SNIP:

You answered your own question, actually.

Immersing yourself in popular culture is a connecting experience, and sharing that experience is a communal event. You're retelling the pseudo-mythological backdrop of modern life in a communal setting. You're connecting with other people by virtue of your shared experience, your common frame of reference.

Laugh it off if you will (or turn your nose up at it, believing yourself above the community), but it's a valid and vital part of human life. The stories told around the campfire aren't retold because they're new; they're retold precisely because they're not.

In your opinion, the pop-culture references are shallow and bland. Perhaps you're right. They remain, nonetheless, popular. The fact that they're popular, or at least that they're popular within a particular microcosm of society, is what gives them life and value. Their intrinsic value matters little, if at all, aside from the way they shape the culture around them.

Attack the values or message of a particular fragment of pop-culture if you will; that's a valid, even necessary, endeavor. If you can, look at the culture it generates from an outsider's perspective; bravo.

But don't deride people for being immersed in it and for wanting to share their communal experience with each other. And don't deride their communal experience for the most important value it has - its commonality.

 

[mikedidthis]

Two, I read your last post just before I left for school today and have been thinking since how to respond. I get home tonight only to find that MoogleEmpMog has said almost exactly what I was thinking only much better than I could have said it.

I guess it seems to me that your position that people need to create meaningful connections is in direct conflict with your position that "'pop culture' tv/movies/music are bare-bones bad and lacking in many ways". People will use the tools they have to make those connections and, like it or not, pop culture is one of those tools. If you reject it wholesale you cut the connection-making process off at its starting point for many people. Should we examine it and critique it and dissect it? Sure. But we should also use it as a way to get closer to each other.

Although, yeah, I agree with you that quoting ad-infinitum when the others in the group want to move things forward just bugs.

KnowWhutIMean, Vern?

 

[The Grackle]

But don't deride people for being immersed in it and for wanting to share their communal experience with each other. And don't deride their communal experience for the most important value it has - its commonality.

"Yeah! Get 'em Steve Dan!"

Of course, the quote I'm most guilty of promulgating is, "Surrender or die in obscurity!" (Ramza Beoulve, Final Fantasy Tactics, ch. 1, sc. 2)

"This is the way!"
(FFT is my all time favorite video-game. )

 

[The Grackle]

...People, you are gaming with human beings, your friends (presumably), and they deserve more from you than stale leavings of pop culture, which in itself is simply voracious, taking all, and giving so very little… so very little. Humans are capable of so much, and at the same time are so often bereft, or distanced from one another (and themselves), and when a chance comes to connect, to throw something out that might link to something genuine, it’s a misfortune to crush any real hope of achieving this by expressing something NOT of yourself ...

[ANECDOTE]
So I met this kid in highschool who was a friend of a friend of mine. This guy was a burly punkrocker w/a shaved head and a leather jacket that said "NUMB" on the back, and his idea of a good time was crashing frat parties to get in fights. Pretty dissimilar from me in about every way. He was giving us a ride somewhere, and while stopped at a red light he looks back and asks me, "So, who do you think would win in a fight? Conan or Elric?"
And at that moment we became friends.
[/ANECDOTE]

Really, c'mon. This how people communicate. We don't write each other poetry, we play D&D. We don't sing epic songs of our forefathers, we sing karoke. It's fine. We all have friends that we love and connect with in meaningful ways, even if we make a few Simpsons references along the way.

Nothing has cemented the bonds of friendships between me and others as much as the mutual love of geeky media/pop-culture, and often with people who I would never have even spoken to otherwise. How could that be a bad thing?